Daily Vocabulary Words: List of Daily Used Words
Hi there. Welcome to this special section @ Wordpandit.
Our endeavour here is straightforward: highlighting important daily vocabulary words, you would encounter in The Hindu. This is your repository of commonly used words; essentially, we are posting a list of daily used words. Hence, this has significant practical application as it teaches you words that are commonly used in a leading publication such as The Hindu.
Visit the website daily to learn words from The Hindu.
Word-1: Illicit
Meaning: Not legally permitted or authorised; unlicensed; unlawful. / disapproved of or not permitted for moral or ethical reasons.
Synonyms: Adulterous, bootleg, clandestine, contraband, furtive, illegal, illegitimate, immoral, improper, prohibited, unauthorised, unlawful, unlicensed, wrongful, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. Illicit diamond exports are worth over $200 million.
2. The declared goal of Washington’s policy is to staunch the flow of illicit drugs.
3. The black market for hot art now ranks third behind drug smuggling and the trade in illicit guns.
Word-2: Ground-breaking
Meaning: Original and important; showing a new way of doing or thinking about things.
Synonyms: Innovative, revolutionary, avant-garde, radical, cutting-edge, innovating, leading-edge, spearheading, trailblazing, trendsetting.
Usage Examples:
1. They have sifted through an extraordinary amount of information and compiled a readable, thorough and ground-breaking account of the subject.
2. The Fabian Society is a British socialist intellectual movement best known for its initial ground-breaking work beginning in the late 19th century and then up to World War I.
3. In the documentary, scientists from various disciplines put the most compelling sasquatch evidence to the test. Collectively their conclusions are ground-breaking.
Word-3: Contravention
Meaning: The act of doing something that a law or rule does not allow, or an instance of this.
Synonyms: Breach, infringement, conflict, dispute, infraction, obstruction, opposition, transgression.
Usage Examples:
1. They faced charges of conspiracy, murder, and contravention of the Aviation Security Act of 1982.
2. Contravention of other provisions can result in prosecution either summarily or on indictment.
3. Similarly, prosecutions relating to water pollution and contravention of planning notices are dealt with in the Magistrates’ Court.
Word-4: Curtail
Meaning: To reduce or limit something or to stop something before it is finished.
Synonyms: Cut back, decrease, diminish, downsize, halt, lessen, reduce, shorten, slash, trim, abbreviate, chop, clip, contract, cramp, cut, dock, lop, minify, retrench, truncate, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. This is so despite falling tax rates in many industrialised countries and bank secrecy legislation designed to curtail their attraction.
2. While no-fault insurance has failed in other states, supporters contend this is the first initiative to curtail litigation severely.
3. The Kennel Club defend themselves against accusations that they do not do enough to curtail irresponsible breeding.
Word-5: A priori
Meaning: Relating to an argument that suggests the probable effects of a known cause or using general principles to suggest likely effects.
Synonyms: Based on theory, deduced, deductive, derivable, inferred, presumptive, rational, reasoned, supposed, theoretical.
Usage Examples:
1. Pragmatism agrees with empiricism in emphasising the priority of experience over a priori reasoning.
2. Without such evidence, there is no a priori hypothesis.
3. Well-conducted human studies that demonstrate a clear association in a study design determined a priori for testing the hypothesis of such association.
Word-6: Enshrined
Meaning: To contain or keep in a highly admired and respected place.
Synonyms: Holy, sacred, anointed, beatified, blessed, consecrated, dedicated, divine, honoured, sanctified, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. This is usually enshrined in the Articles by attaching the right of appointment to the investors’ equity shares.
2. The right to free speech is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
3. It is enshrined in draft legislation sponsored by Mario Segni, who championed the cause of electoral reform.
Word-7: Contaminate
Meaning: To make impure or unsuitable by contact or mixture with something unclean, bad, etc.
Synonyms: Corrupt, harm, infect, injure, poison, pollute, stain, taint, tarnish, alloy, befoul, debase, debauch, defile, deprave, desecrate, dirty, pervert, profane, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. The tribe fear that tailings from the mine may contaminate local waterways.
2. Caesium accumulates the food chain from the soil through vegetation to contaminate the meat.
3. Avoid tinned foods because the phenolic resin used to line the tin can contaminate the food.
Word-8: Volatile
Meaning: Likely to change in a very sudden or extreme way / having or showing extreme or sudden changes of emotion.
Synonyms: Buoyant, capricious, elusive, erratic, fickle, resilient, ticklish, unsettled, unstable, elastic, ephemeral, fugitive, gay, imponderable, light, transient, variable, airy, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. A possible third – over-exposure to specialised and/or volatile funds, can be eliminated simply by being cautious.
2. The uncertainty manifests itself above all in the volatile perceptions of the two candidates.
3. Volatile anaesthetics, such as Enflurane, Halothane and Isflurane, are vaporised into the gas mixture administered to the patient.
Word-9: Befall
Meaning: An old-fashioned or literary way of saying something happened by chance.
Synonyms: Ensue, materialise, transpire, action, bechance, betide, break, cook, develop, fall, follow, gel, hap, happen, jell, occur, shake, smoke, supervene, etc.
Usage Examples:
1. It is a popular belief that the worst horrors befall whoever invites the curse of a hijra.
2. Blues was only suffering the same fate that, surprisingly, would soon befall the soul.
3. For his own good she frequently reminded him of the horrors and deprivations that would befall him there.
